A recent trend in the automotive industry includes efforts to develop schemes and systems that can facilitate the use of high beam headlamps in the presence of oncoming vehicles, pedestrians and other traffic. Many auto makers have attempted to develop such capabilities, including systems that can move or otherwise orient headlamps away from oncoming vehicles and pedestrians. Other efforts include control systems that can deactivate a left- and/or right-hand set of high beam elements in response to oncoming vehicles and pedestrians.
Some of these configurations and approaches have been employed to block or obscure light from the headlamps of a vehicle from striking oncoming vehicles, pedestrians and other traffic. Nevertheless, these conventional configurations and approaches have come at the expense of providing sufficient light to illuminate the areas and regions surrounding the oncoming vehicles, pedestrians and other traffic. That is, these conventional adaptive headlamp systems provide a benefit to oncoming vehicles, pedestrians and other traffic that generally comes at the expense of the effectiveness of the headlamp system in illuminating regions in front of the vehicle for the benefit of the driver and passengers of the vehicle.
In some cases, for example, these conventional systems successfully limit the amount of light from the headlamps from striking oncoming vehicles, pedestrians and other traffic, but are limited in their responsiveness in returning to a state in which the headlamp can effectively illuminate the required areas and regions in front of the vehicle for the benefit of the driver and passengers of the vehicle containing the system. That is, these conventional systems can suffer from an inability to quickly revert to a state in which the light from the headlamp is not blocked or otherwise obscured as oncoming vehicles, pedestrians and other traffic move outside of the headlamp patterns generated by these systems.
Accordingly, there is a need to develop adaptive vehicular lighting systems that generate headlamp patterns which can illuminate all regions ahead of the vehicle that are desired to be illuminated (e.g., as required based on federal regulations), while temporarily shading, blocking or otherwise obscuring oncoming vehicles, pedestrians and other traffic from these headlamp patterns.